


Growing Personalities

by Arcadian



Category: Inside Out (2015)
Genre: Drabble Collection, F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-29
Updated: 2015-09-03
Packaged: 2018-04-17 20:26:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4680209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arcadian/pseuds/Arcadian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As Riley grows up, the emotions face more hardships and the increasingly more difficult task of helping their girl. Along the way, they continue to work on their teamwork skills and find out new things about themselves. (May include gen or shippy drabbles or one-shots, the contents of each will be noted in their beginning note.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Helping Hand

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey all, I did promise a drabble collection, and here lies the beginning of it! Let me know what you think afterwards, this one was originally written almost 3 weeks ago, and then edited tonight.
> 
> This one is pretty general, but implied future Joy/Sadness. Later drabbles may include actual shippy Joy/Sadness. (I'm rather undecided on the other ship for the moment.)

Even after a year or two in San Francisco, new challenges were making it tougher and tougher on Riley - and on Joy and the others to get her through the situations. Making more new friends, avoiding bullies, helping her be safe while walking to and from school... it was more work than the emotions were used to.

Joy, of course, took every single challenge as a new opportunity - she was normally the one in charge on school days, with the other emotions taking their own seats and helping make team decisions on what to suggest to Riley. They were still learning, but they made a pretty great team.

Unfortunately, everyone _but_ Joy didn't feel the same after a while - notably one in particular, who found it quite hard to sleep one night.

They were taking turns with dream duty, and it was Joy's turn - tonight saw some stressful dreams, some good dreams, the usual. At this point, she had decided that sometimes Riley needed some not-so-happy dreams to help her through any rough patches. (She still drew the line when it came to super scary dreams, though.)

When the audio failed for a few seconds, she thought she heard something - soft sobbing. It took her a second to realize what it was, and, making sure the dream was still okay, she quickly tip-toed up the ramp, across the rooms towards Sadness', and walked inside.

Sadness, of course, was upset over all the hardships they were going through. And Joy felt for her; the sunny emotion might find it easy to be happy all the time, but Sadness was a completely different story. But since the dream was having some issues, Joy had no issue staying and sitting beside Sadness' bed, talking to her and trying to cheer her up. Cheering Sadness up was... not always easy, Joy noted, but she found that toning down her hyper-optimism seemed to do a lot better.

This started happening whenever Joy had dream duty afterwards: she'd tend to go check up on Sadness and make sure she was doing okay. After a couple of visits, she found herself holding Sadness' hand to keep her calm. It was a strange feeling, one that she remembered from that day, when Sadness saved Riley, and she brought Joy over to help. It definitely did the trick, and a combination of holding her friend's hand and small talk helped Sadness go to sleep whenever she was upset.

\--

A few weeks later, Joy was again on dream duty, listening out for if she needed to check on Sadness. But a voice spoke up and surprised her.

"D-Do you mind if I join you...?"

Joy turned to face her. "Oh, Sadness! Of course, have a seat." She beamed at her friend, and turned back to the screen, watching the dream.

What surprised her more than anything, though, was Sadness slowly taking Joy's hand. She turned to Sadness, but was surprised to find her hiding her face a little. She grinned and squeezed her friend's hand, which caused Sadness to relax and smile a bit in return.

Turning back to the dreams, Joy couldn't help realizing something. Unlike when she had grabbed Sadness' hand in the past, she felt... warm. Well, okay, she _usually_ felt warm and giddy, as it was the way she was. But this felt... different.

And something told her that Sadness was thinking something similar. But they didn't let go of each other's hands. Not until morning, when everyone else got up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed it, short as it was. But drabbles are generally pretty short, aren't they? Some future ones may be longer, such as a couple other gen ones I have in mind. But they work better in this collection than as standalone one-shots.
> 
> Requests are more than welcome, but keep in mind that currently I will only take requests for gen stuff, or Joy/Sadness or Fear/Disgust shippy stuff. I'm not planning on going into anything related to Riley going through puberty or anything like that. Many others here have already done that and have done great work themselves. I'd rather focus on light-hearted things, myself, in regards to Riley. (The emotions on the other hand might have to deal with less-lighthearted things at some points)


	2. Not So Sad Dreams

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It'd been a rough day for Sadness, all things considered. She'd earned her rest, for sure.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Implied future Joy/Sadness, same as the last drabble.
> 
> Sorry, I wanted to alternate between shippy and gen stuff (and also alternate between Joy/Sadness and Fear/Disgust), but this idea came up and refused to go away until I wrote it!

"And we're going into REM!" Joy couldn't help throwing her arms in the air in glee. "Good work, everybody, I think we've had a pretty balanced day, all things considered."

While Fear, Disgust and Anger said their usual end-of-day things and started shuffling off to bed, Joy found Sadness sitting on the couch, and sat down beside her after sending the memories to long-term, smiling over at her friend. "Pretty long day today, huh Sadness?"

She got a slight nod in return. "Yeah... it was kinda rough there for a couple of hours, though..."

"I think you handled it just fine, though." Joy beamed. "We were all there working together, like we have been, right? You weren't going it alone or anything."

"Yeah..." Sadness clasped her hands together, looking down. "It was really sad, though... Riley dropping her phone... it was so upsetting..."

"Good thing Mom had it insured then, right?" Joy looked back at the screen - it'd be time for Dream Duty soon, and it was her turn.

"I guess..." Sadness' voice seemed to lower a little. "Fear did say we should've thought to get a case for it, though..."

"Next time, then!" Joy watched the dream start, being... astonishingly non-phone related! But Joy knew it'd pop up eventually. She needed to keep an eye on it, though she had no plans to do anything if the dreams did turn phone-related - she just needed to be sure it wasn't upsetting the balance.

...

Whoops, she kind of zoned out for a minute there, staring at the screen. It was time to go sit at the console... but she felt a weight on her shoulder. Turning slightly, she noticed that Sadness had fallen asleep, resting her head on Joy's shoulder. Joy felt for her friend, really - it'd been a rough day for Sadness, all things considered. She'd earned her rest, for sure.

She'd let Sadness sleep on the couch for the moment - it seemed a shame to wake her up, since she looked like she was having... well, less sad dreams than usual. But she realized that Sadness also had her arms around Joy's own arm, and she had started whimpering a little when Joy tried to move. That probably explained why Sadness was having her own okay dreams...

Well, the dream Riley was having still seemed like it was doing okay... Joy decided it would be just fine if she stayed with her friend, for now. Maybe in a little bit, an hour or so, she'd wake her up and guide her to bed. But everything's okay right now.

After a few minutes, Joy found herself resting her head on top of Sadness' gently, still watching the monitor. But for the moment, she felt content. Moreso than usual. That same warm, fuzzy feeling from before had hit her again. It was strange, something she couldn't explain. But for the moment, maybe it didn't need explaining. She was just happy being here with Sadness right now, even if the other was asleep. She was happy that her presence was seemingly making her friend feel content in her dreams.

And at the end of the day, a day like Sadness had, Joy was happy that she was able to be there for her, for once.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you all enjoyed! I'm going to try to work on a gen or a Fear/Disgust thing next, no promises if another Joy/Sadness thing bonks me over the head. I went ahead and changed the relationships thing back to just F/F for now - whenever I finally do a Fear/Disgust (or maybe it'll be Disgust/Anger, who knows now) I'll update the relationships tag and re-add the F/M relationship tag.
> 
> Also, future drabbles may be longer, since some of the ideas I have just can't really be told in 400-600 words properly, so if any of you are looking forward to longer drabbles, have no fear, they're coming! ... Eventually. I'm trying to keep a fair few of these on the shorter side so they don't feel like they're detracting too much from the point of the drabble.
> 
> As always, requests welcome! Leave a comment if you have a request, and mind my guidelines from chapter 1, please!


End file.
